The Justice Department on Thursday filed a statement of interest siding with a group that alleges in a lawsuit that Harvard University discriminates against Asian-American applicants.
The group, Students for Fair Admissions, alleged in its lawsuit first filed in 2014 that the school discriminated against them during the admissions process and ignored results from its own internal investigation showing bias against Asian-Americans. Edward Blum leads the group, and is a known anti-affirmative action activist.
“Harvard’s race-based admissions process significantly disadvantages Asian-American applicants compared to applicants of other racial groups — including both white applicants and applicants from other racial minority groups,” Justice Department lawyer’s wrote in Thursday’s court filing.
The Justice Department first weighed in on the case in April, urging the federal judge overseeing the case in Boston to release years of admission data.
Court documents released in June show that in addition to admitting applicants by using admissions measures such as test scores, grades, and extracurricular activities, the university also used “personal ratings” based on “subjective factors” such as personality and respectability.
The documents show that Asian-Americans — despite scoring higher than applicants of any racial or ethnic group on admissions measures such as test scores and grades — were brought down by their personal ratings.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement Thursday that “no American should be denied admission to school because of their race.”
“This case is significant because the admissions policies at our colleges and universities are important and must be conducted lawfully,” said Sessions.
[Related: Academia defends Harvard’s allegedly racist admissions policies]
According to the Justice Department’s statement of interest, Harvard has “failed to show” that it does not “unlawfully discriminate” against Asian-Americans.
“Harvard points to no record evidence of any meaningful standards guiding its consideration of race in making admissions decisions,” Justice Department attorneys wrote. “The best that Harvard can muster is the statement of one admissions officer that the consideration of race in the overall rating ‘depends on the individual case,’ and may be done ‘to reflect the strength of the case and to provide a slight tip for some students.’”
The Supreme Court upheld affirmative action policies in 2016 following a lawsuit brought by a white woman who sued the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 after she was denied admission. Justice Athony Kennedy, who retired from the high court earlier this year, was the swing vote and authored the 4-3 decision.
Harvard, one of the most sought-after and top-tier universities in the country, admitted less than 5 percent of its applicants this year.
“It turns out that the suspicions of Asian-American alumni, students and applicants were right all along,” the group, Students for Fair Admissions, said in a court document in June. “Harvard today engages in the same kind of discrimination and stereotyping that it used to justify quotas on Jewish applicants in the 1920s and 1930s.”
Harvard has accused the group of basing its arguments on “invective, mis-characterizations and in some cases outright misrepresentations,” and Harvard denies it partakes in “racial balancing.”
Students for Fair Admissions is seeking relief from Harvard’s alleged discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance.
Harvard has called the group a “mailing list” that Blum is using to bring down affirmative action.
“We are deeply disappointed that the Department of Justice has taken the side of Edward Blum and Students for Fair Admissions, recycling the same misleading and hollow arguments that prove nothing more than the emptiness of the case against Harvard,” the school said in a statement. “Harvard does not discriminate against applicants from any group, and will continue to vigorously defend the legal right of every college and university to consider race as one factor among many in college admissions, which the Supreme Court has consistently upheld for more than 40 years.”
Harvard cautioned that the probe into its admissions policies is still ongoing, but Blum said he was glad the Justice Department “has concluded Harvard’s admissions policies are in violation of our nation’s civil rights laws.”
“We look forward to having the gravely troubling evidence that Harvard continues to keep redacted disclosed to the American public in the near future,” he said.
The American Civil Liberties Union said the Justice Department getting involved marks an attempt to “dismantle progress in racial equity.”
“The Trump administration has advocated for “race-blind” policies, which Harvard and virtually all other universities have found are demonstrably insufficient to achieve meaningful diversity, given the reality of historic and continuing racial discrimination in this country,” the ACLU said.
The Justice Department involvement comes less than two months after the Trump administration said it was rescinding seven Obama-era policy guidelines issued between 2011 and 2016 on affirmative action. The guidance documents, issued by the Justice and Education departments, had been designed to increase diversity on college campuses by encouraging administrators to consider the use of race in admissions.
The case is set to go on trial in federal court in Boston in October.
